WhatFinger


Bureaucrats too young to remember the cold war are now turning Europe into a communist state, Putin must be laughing

EU - has banned our vacuum cleaners and this is only the beginning



London, England –“That’s it! I’ve had it. I am voting UKIP (the party that wants separation from the EU) from now on!” my husband exclaimed to me this weekend when yet another store was out of stock of the high powered vacuum we wanted to buy before they were banned. He has been a Tory all his life, but this personal intrusion into how we decide to consume is consuming him with anger.
As of this past Monday it is illegal to import or manufacture vacuum cleaners over 1600 watts in the EU and by 2017 that will go down to 900 watts. We might as well start thinking about 18th century carpet beaters or installing stone floors and sweeping them. A streak of panic buying has gripped the UK as we all look to stock-pile the popular and efficient 2200 watt cleaners. In one shop, I was clutching the display model while the sales assistant checked the computer for stock. ”No problem – there are 400 in stock and you can order online and it will be delivered to your house”, he said cheerfully. I wasn’t convinced as this was the flagship store in London and they were out of stock. My other half pried my fingers off the machine and assured me it will be online. It wasn’t, nor was it available in a number of other outlets. Some shops I called didn’t even answer the phone they were so overrun. The populist Daily Mail is the voice of outrage and even ran a 50% offer in association with the Hoover manufacturer. They sold their remaining stock of one thousand in just one day.

This is just the beginning

Vacuum cleaners are the tip of the iceberg. High powered lawnmowers, hairdryers, toasters, dishwashers, kettles, televisions and a current list of 30 other items that are deemed to be using “too much” electricity by the Eurocrats will inch us back into the dark ages as we are being forced to conform to low power rules.

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Heck – we are already there. If you didn’t stock pile incandescent light bulbs a few years ago, you are doomed to the migraine inducing dingy light of the low-quality, low-energy halogen or LED. You may still get a few online, but once these reserves are gone they are gone and the stocks are not huge. Every aspect of our lives is being investigated and regulated. In the pipeline are studies looking at the environmental impact of tissue paper and construction materials for the building industry like masonry mortars and wooden floors. Pretty soon we won't be able to buy glass door handles because they use too much desert sand to make. The Toys Directive banned a children’s air gun because the rubber suction cups were 29.55mm and not the required 57mm which stops kids from choking. This molly coddling of society will only lead to an infantile complacence as all responsibility for making decisions is left to the state – something the EU relishes because it will keep a lot of people in well paid jobs.

What this is really all about

This ban is harmful and stupid. Harmful as we won’t be able to maintain good standards of hygiene and stupid and self defeating because as you reduce power, you will have to use your appliance for longer, consuming the same amount of energy in the end. Sir James Dyson, the inventor of the bag-less vacuum cleaner has argued that a well designed machine does not need a high wattage. He would say that because his machines conformed to all the new specifications before they were enforced and the moot point is that this has put his competitors at a disadvantage. Freedom loving Euro MEP Daniel Hannan revealed in the Daily Mail that large corporations actually love EU rules and lobby the bureaucrats for more rules whose compliance costs does not affect them, but does kill the smaller competition. The whole climate change argument gets thrown out the window when one considers that if every country in the EU were to throw themselves back to the 18th century and romantic Jane Austen lifestyles of beating carpets and scrubbing clothes on a washing board, that is to say ban all households appliances, we would reduce carbon emissions by a whopping 1%. This isn’t about saving the planet. It’s about giving advantages to certain producers and extending the power of the Politburo that is Brussels. Meanwhile developing counties are free to build 1200 coal-fuelled power stations that are now in the pipeline. The EU has set itself a 30% emissions reduction target that is offset many times over by the industrialization of countries like China, India and Brazil. Forget that their GDP is outstripping the west and our corporations hunger for a slice of their consumer spending, we are determined to self annihilate. Why should we live with cat hair stuck to our sofas and dusty carpets while manufacturers who brought about this misery piously claim they are saving the environment? Why should the relationship between a person who wants to buy something and another who is selling be monitored and controlled by a bureaucrat?

Small gains

It is without doubt we need legislation to prevent shoddy and dangerous merchandise like electrical goods with wires hanging out of them or toys painted with lead, but common sense must prevail. One light in the tunnel was the EU U-turn over the olive oil debacle. A regulation was almost passed that required all restaurants to use factory packaged bottles with tamper proof ‘ hygienic’ nozzle and printed labelling in line with Brussels standards, thereby ending the freedom of businesses to buy from small artisanal producers or family businesses in favour of the huge industrial olive oil producers. All hell broke loose in the press accompanied by thousands of complaints across the EU. Interestingly this was led by Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission whose father just happens to have been a small artisanal producer of olive oil. The EU Commission for Agriculture cancelled the ban and left Copa-Cogeca, a farming association that represents industrial olive oil producers who stood to gain from the higher price for factory packaged bottles, to lick their greedy wounds. The message here is that we must fight – constantly lobbying for freedom as hard as the corporations that are creating a fascist economy if we let them. As for me, I did get my 2200 watt vacuum in the end from a catalogue company that still has some. I am considering stockpiling another for the future. As for my husband, his final enraged words on the subject were “Bureaucrats too young to remember the cold war are now turning Europe into a communist state, Putin must be laughing.”


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Anna Grayson-Morley -- Bio and Archives

Anna Grayson—Morley is a London based freelance journalist.


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